A New Year's Day: Let's See Together
by John Kendall Hawkins
.
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
-Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind," The Freewheelin'
.
The good thing about thinking is it's a panic
room that you can run to when world sh*t hits the fan,
a place you can settle down from being manic,
a sunroom where you can get your mind a tan.
Because the panic room is all we really have.
It is the seat of our humanity; our soul.
Anne Frank's attic. Dostoyevsky's underground rave.
The je ne sais quoi that keeps us from turning ghoul.
A 'quiet' thanksgiving dinner where we gather
foibles, predispositions, what god gave us gifts,
all the relatives under one roof for blather,
bon mots, power over the beasts, and exotic riffs.
As I prepare to leave my atoms behind, hindsight
gives me a swift kick in the ass: I see the light.
(Article changed on Jan 03, 2022 at 5:45 AM EST)